Insanity Defense: Why Should It Be Eliminated Or Altered Hassan Khan Ozark Technical College Mr. Brett Houser 28 January 2014 Abstract The author of this paper argues several reasons why the insanity plea should be changed or either eliminated. The reasons are considered
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Insanity Defense In criminal trials‚ the insanity defense is the claim that the defendant is not responsible for his or her actions due to mental health problems. Any mental illness could serve the basis for an insanity defense‚ excluding conditions that have antisocial behaviors as their primary characteristic and appear to have no physiological basis. Overall I believe that if someone has a real mental illness and it made him or her commit their crime‚ they should not go to prison. I feel that
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The defences of insanity‚ substantial impairment by abnormality of mind and automatism play a vital role in avoiding criminal liability. Principally‚ the defences reflect the idea that intellectually challenged individuals should not be penalised but rather treated of their mental impairment. However the outcomes of each defence have also been criticised as ‘anomalous and arbitrary’ due to conflicting legal and medical definitions. Consequently‚ support for the abolishment of these defences has
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standards in society are detrimental to one’s success as one can never achieve perfection‚ ultimately leading to complete mental insanity of the unnamed narrator within “The Yellow Wallpaper”. To
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The Insanity Defense has always been a controversial issue. Can people really be too mentally ill to be responsible or does their mental defect affect their way of thinking at the time of a crime? People who plead not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) do not go to prison for their crime but usually spend time in a psychiatric hospital until mental health authorities determine when they are not a danger to society. The insanity defense focuses on the defendant ’s state of mind at the time of the
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As defined by Merriam Webster’s Dictionary‚ the insanity plea is‚ “the claim that the defendant is not responsible for his or her actions during a mental health episode‚” and consequently exempts the defendant from full criminal punishment. Since 1994‚ it has been statistically proven that only .9 percent of criminal cases have used the insanity defense. It was also discovered that .013 percent of insanity pleas are successful. Therefore‚ even though many believe that some defendants take advantage
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Many people have heard about the insanity defense in different famous cases where it has come up and been used. The insanity defense is a compromise between society and the law‚ meaning that society believes that criminals shouldn ’t be punished if they are mentally incapable of controlling their conduct. There is a lot of controversy with the insanity defense‚ like questions such as what is the different if an insane person killed someone and if a sane person killed someone‚ the person is still
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Kevin Fogarty 4/2/13 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Essay AP Literature - Stops As Ray Bradbury once said‚ "Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage." In his novel‚ One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest‚ Ken Kesey depicts this arbitrary line between sane and insane. By elucidating the oppressive role of the mental institution and portraying its patients as more eccentric than insane‚ Kesey sparks a re-evaluation of what it means to be insane. Throughout the
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Introduction: The insanity defense has been used for many years and believed to began around the 1720’s where the first formal defense was used in a court in 1724. Judge Tracy‚ the judge that ruled over the first case coined a term “The wild beast standard” that states “for someone to be insane he must be totally deprived of his understanding and memory‚ and not know what he is doing anymore than an infant‚ a brute‚ or a wild beast” (Neville‚ 2010‚ pp.3-4). After the Daniel M’Naghten case‚ a man
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“True! -nervous-very‚ very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses-not destroyed-not dulled them.” (Poe) There are different definitions of legal insanity such as the M ’Naghten Rules which were a reaction to the acquittal in 1843 of Daniel M ’Naghten on the charge of murdering Edward Drummond‚ whom M’Naghten had mistaken for British Prime Minister‚ Robert Peel. M ’Naghten fired a pistol at the back of Peel ’s secretary‚ Edward
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